The limitations of physical evidence

Published: 9 June 2012 (GMT+10)

The short answer to your question—as you may be aware, there is not one shred of physical evidence for the talking snake—we wouldn’t expect there to be, and it’s not
a problem in the least to believe that there was a talking snake while acknowledging the complete lack of physical evidence. To explain why, it requires a bit of understanding about the nature
and limitations of various forms of evidence.

Physical evidence only exists for a very limited number of things. You see, physical evidence, by definition, is a physical object here in the present. Some claims by nature have no physical
evidence because the claims aren’t physical in nature—for instance “We can only have eternal life through Jesus”, “I love you”, and so forth—things
that are spiritual, emotional, or cerebral in nature have no physical evidence because they’re not physical claims.

Physical evidence only exists for a very limited number of things. Some claims by nature have no physical evidence because the claims aren’t physical in nature.

Some things once had physical evidence, but we’ve lost access to that evidence. For instance, a very high proportion of first-century men in Israel were named Yeshua, but we’ve
lost all evidence for most of them—if you lived in the first century, the physical evidence would have consisted of going around and seeing them, and inscriptions talking about this one
or the other (and all but one would not be the Yeshua that we now know as Jesus in the English-speaking world). The further back one goes, the more likely it is that the vast majority of the
physical evidence has been lost through sheer entropy. For instance, we know through documentary evidence that every Roman governor kept detailed records, and each Roman soldier got ‘pay
slips’ detailing their wages, yet not one scrap of physical evidence remains for any of this. And the physical evidence for many historical events is ephemeral by nature. Once in a while
physical evidence that was lost is recovered—for instance, the pool of Siloam was uncovered in Jerusalem, and its layout nicely matched the documentary evidence in the Gospel of John.

Other things have physical evidence, but the interpretation of that evidence varies so widely that we’re often not sure quite what the evidence is telling us. For instance, for a long
time paleontologists classified some dinosaur fossils (a type of physical evidence) as different species, when in fact they were different growth stages of one species of
dinosaur—see Dinosaur ‘puberty blues’ for paleontologists.

One key form of evidence is documentary evidence–when someone who had access to physical evidence (which may or may not still exist) or who witnessed an event tells us about it.

Because physical evidence is so limited, it’s fortunate that there are other forms of evidence that are crucial to ‘fill in the gaps.’ One key form of evidence is
documentary evidence—when someone who had access to physical evidence (which may or may not still exist) or who witnessed an event tells us about it. Some of the well-known people who
did this in ancient times were Josephus, Philo, and Tacitus, but really, any written document that tells us about something that happened is claiming to be documentary evidence. Now, this
evidence varies in quality, and it’s all biased towards the view of the author, but without documentary evidence, we wouldn’t know about the crossing of the Rubicon, the Trojan
war, or the worship of the Pantheon in Greece and Rome, just to take a few examples off the top of my head. Documentary evidence ‘fills in the gaps’ by giving us a context for
interpreting the physical evidence, and giving us information that the physical evidence itself couldn’t possibly tell us.

Another form of evidence is scientific—if someone claims, for instance, that there was a solar eclipse on a certain day, then we can do calculations and tell with a fair degree of
accuracy whether there was, in fact, an eclipse. This sort of evidence is limited and only covers phenomena which we can test or repeat. For instance, there is no scientific evidence,
per se, of the crossing of the Rubicon. And miraculous events claim to defy scientific laws (even in ‘pre-scientific’ times, people knew that animals generally didn’t speak,
whether donkeys or snakes, that axeheads didn’t float, that virgins didn’t normally conceive, and that the dead generally stayed dead), so to say “that’s not scientifically
possible!” when talking about miracles is beside the point because the whole claim is that God has acted to do things that aren’t normally possible.

morgueFile.com

So we have to ask in a particular situation: What evidence would we expect to have been produced by a certain event, and to have survived to the present day? With a lot of ancient events,
and particularly what we would call miraculous events, not a lot of physical evidence would be produced in the first place, and most of what might have been produced would be lost over the
thousands of intervening years. Generally in these cases, what survives is documentary evidence—the Bible happens to be one source of documentary evidence. Now, it is the only
source for the talking snake we have (in reality, the Bible is 66 different pieces of documentary evidence put together in one binding, because each book can be reckoned as an independent
witness. But the only documentary evidence for the talking snake is in Genesis—when Paul references it in his epistles, and John in his Revelation, that’s evidence that they thought
that Genesis was a reliable witness to the talking snake, but since they’re about 4,000 years afterwards, I wouldn’t call them, in and of themselves, documentary witnesses to the
talking snake). But would we expect more than that? Given that the amount of documentary evidence for any ancient event is minimal, I don’t think so. Of course, one may choose to
accept or reject the documentary evidence, but there is no ground for rejecting an event for having insufficient evidence when physical evidence wouldn’t be expected in the first place.

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Readers’ comments

Colin N.,Australia, 16 June 2012

I have never understood why the poor old snake has to be cursed for the work of satan. If the snake was somehow accountable in that it/they were moral creatures it would be easier to grasp.

Lita Cosner responds

Well, the entire creation was cursed because of sin; snakes crawl on their belly and eat dust, plants have thorns and prickles, billions upon billions of animals have died, and so on. Some animals have gone entirely extinct, which is arguably a worse fate than having to crawl on your belly. So animals with no sense of moral accountability have been suffering the effects of sin for thousands of years now. And there's no evidence that a snake 'suffers' especially from having to crawl on its belly, in any case.

Bob S.,United States, 16 June 2012

If there is no physical evidence, that's no cause to conclude that we've proven that that didn't happen. Nevertheless, without evidence of something supernatural, we have no reason to believe that it happened.

This is especially true when the story being false is such an obvious possibility.

Lita Cosner responds

On the surface this seems reasonable, but what evidence would we expect to exist of a talking serpent, 6,000 years after the event? Hence the article's title 'the limitations of physical evidence.'

It's perfectly reasonable for a Christian who believes that supernatural things occur and that the Bible is a reliable historical record to accept the Bible's account of the serpent as historical.

R. D.,Australia, 15 June 2012

AFAIK, 3 roman soldiers' payslips have been found, not zero as in article.

Lita Cosner responds

Thanks for letting us know; apparently your source is more up-to-date than mine was!

Barbara W.,Canada, 11 June 2012

The snake may not have actually talked. Satan may have talked thru the snake. God condemned the snake for allowing itself to be used by Satan.

Jeff W.,Canada, 10 June 2012

Home run.

Shane J.,South Africa, 9 June 2012

Thank you Lita,

A brilliant and well thought through response.

God bless.

Chandrasekaran M.,Australia, 9 June 2012

When God judged the talking snake of Genesis for its role in the fall, He cursed the serpent. Though we see snakes go on their belly as per the curse, we do not yet see any evidence of their eating dust.

When the wolf and the lamb will graze together in the future, the dust will be the serpent’s food as said in the Bible Isaiah: 65:25 – “ "The wolf and the lamb will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox; and dust will be the serpent's food. They will do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain," says the LORD. “.